jim.shamlin.com

Online Communities

Online communities facilitate collaborating among large numbers of people, who often work together toward common goals, generally pertaining to informational resources. One source describes them as being "collectors" who gather information from online sources as well as offline ones and organize it for their own reference. They also act as "curators," who sort through the vast amounts of information to bring he best content to their audiences. Both functions can he helpful to a marketer, who is trying to get information about his company, brand, or product into the mix, and hopefully in a prominent location.

Social News

(EN: This entire section seems like a mishmash of random information - the notes are going to reflect that.)

The author returns to the concept of "citizen journalism" - many people create information online, and others sift through it to determine what's of interest to themselves and others like them. Anyone can be an author, and instead of having "editors" to determine what gets first-page treatment, the crowd "votes" on what is brought to the fore, just by visiting it themselves and linking or tagging it for others.

This is a significant difference from the traditional media where few controlled what was available to the public, and the economic requirements to be successful (or even viable) as a media outlet kept there from being many choices.

In the current day, social news is overtaking traditional media, and a front-page listing on a site like Digg can get you more attention than a front-page story on the New York Times or a mention on the evening news. The trade-off is that the attention span isn't as great. Visitors from social news sites tend to spend little time on your site before moving on to the next "shiny bauble."

The author also mentions the value of visitors: some traffic sources send you a lower headcount of visitors who are more valuable, more likely to form a relationship with your brand and purchase your products regularly. So getting the "right" audience is more important then getting a large audience.

Simply having a Web site once got attention when there were few of them, but as the Web grew, you had to work harder to get attention. The same can presently be said of social media: simply having a blog or Facebook page does not attract the attention of the world.

The author warns about using "tricks" to "game" social news sites to get attention using "nefarious methods." He discourages that strongly: while you get a lot of eyes, few of them are really interested in what you have to offer, and many will bounce out. What's more you will taint your reputation and make it more difficult to get the right kind of attention from the right kind of people. So it does more harm than good in the long run.

The right approach is to generate interesting content and promote it to small numbers, collecting over time a large audience of truly interested individuals.

The author provides a list of strategies that seem to resonate with social communities:

(EN: My first take was this is contrary to his earlier advice about doing things to grab attention, so temper it with the qualification of being able to do such things in a way that's consistent with your company, brand, or product.)

It's also important not merely to be a publisher of information, but an active participant in the community and build online relationships with people. You need friends and supporters who will help you to succeed in the social media.

The author suggests getting involved with social media under your real name, developing credibility as a real person to friends and colleagues, and eventually submitting information related to your organization or industry to test the waters, with the goal of eventually leveraging your experience to market in earners.

(EN: I don't know if I'm entirely keen on this. While I would agree that the barrier between personal and professional life is blurry, I think it still exists, and to attempt to fill both roles from a single "identity" online is like handing out business cards at a church picnic, or wearing a political button on the lapel of the suit you wear when speaking to customers on the company's behalf. In the present age and culture, some division must be preserved).

Social Bookmarking and Curation

The "curator" aspect of social media is in the ability of a crowd working together to "rate" content and call attention to things that merit it. The most common function is "social bookmarking," in which members of a community call attention to information that may be hidden in the billions of Web pages that are out there.

(EN: social bookmarking is nothing new - at the onset of the Internet, people normally publicized their collection of links on their personal Web space - back when a "home page" was the "home" of a person, which was open to visitors but primarily for their own reference. Social bookmarking merely aggregates and systematizes this effort.)

The author lists some of the social bookmarking sites out there to demonstrate the range and diversity of interests served: Auto Spies (for car buffs); Digg (started as technology, but spread to other topics); Fark (one of the oldest, which aggregates "unusual" news); Hacker news (originally for computer hackers, but now covers "anything that gratifies intellectual curiosity); kirtsy (fashion); Newsvine (current events); SlashDot (Technology News), Sphinn (interactive marketing); Teenway (celebrity gossip); Tipped (investing); etc.

In addition to bookmarking, tagging is common (and often applied to media information), in which individuals associate words or concepts with an image, video, audio, or Web page that enables others to find it.

For marketers, social bookmarking enables them to take the pulse of the online community: to see what topics are of the greatest interest. The most popular tags identify the interests of the audience (or the site on which items are being tagged, at least), and by deduction, to recognize where interest in your company/product exists, or where it can be fostered by association.

It's also noted that many media find that social bookmarking communities are a key place to manage blogger relations. Of particular interest is the case of Steve Rubel, a popular blogger who marketers to "pitch" him in Delicious rather than sending e-mail. Some other bloggers followed suit, and online marketers have begin to use this as a standard method for getting the attention of bloggers.

Should You Build Your Own Social Network?

One tactic among companies looking to get into the social networking scene is to build their own social network or "portal" and ask/expect individuals to join rather than leveraging the existing social networks.

This is not a successful tactic, and the author presents case of Budweiser's "Bud TV" attempt, which failed miserably in spite of the company's appeal to its target market and over $30 mm in investment.

Unless your company is a major player and owns sufficient mindshare to attract a crowd, this is generally wasted effort: most individuals don't feel the need to create a separate account to discuss a topic that's already being discussed in the places they already hang out, and there's the fear that a company is attempting gather additional data on participants to market them or lash out when they make any negative remarks.

Also, the conversation in existing places will not stop - and it will have greater publicity and credibility than the interaction that takes place on a proprietary networking site, as there is a perception that a company/organization operating its own site is attempting to control or influence the conversation.

The exception may be in instances where your company appeals to a small group of people with specialized interests that they wish to keep separate from their online identities, or a large group of customers who are willing to interact with one another in greater detail for a specific purposes (a handful of networks have sprung up around Amazon to facilitate interaction among readers of specific kinds of books).

(EN: In the latter case, my sense is that this was more in the nature of natural evolution rather than something Amazon attempted to force. Users had accounts for shopping, and the ability to post their reviews of products, so creating a ":community" where discussion could be more interactive was merely the next step forward Note also the example of Netflix, who has mad a few half-hearted attempts at doing the same, but doesn't seem to have gotten the recipe quite right as yet.)

What About Wikipedia?

The author mentions Wikipedia, providing a general description of it, and indicates that it is one of the most popular sites on the Internet, taken as the de-facto "authority" on many subjects, even though it's a volunteer work that anyone can edit.

However "everyone" seems to include companies writing about themselves. . Wikipedia's aim is to be unbiased, and if companies were permitted to write their own entries, the site would degenerate into an advertising channel, so the editors can be very aggressive.

The author's advice is to be cautious about Wikipedia - reading the guidelines and expectations and proceeding with caution. The advice is to never write an entry for your own company (and make sure your marketing staff stays well away) and not to edit it unless your are attempting to correct inaccurate or out of date information. Even then, consider pointing out inaccuracies on the "discussion" page and let a third-party confirm and update.

This approach is difficult for commercial interests to accept: since the site gets much attention, there is a desire to ensure that the company's positioning within it is prominent and positive, but tinkering can do your online reputation more harm than good.

Photo Sharing with Flickr

The author mentions Flickr as one of several photo-sharing sites, in which individuals can create an account and post their photos online. It originally became popular as a platform for bloggers to store images for their blogs (as the popular blogging platforms did not provide space for graphics), btu has spread beyond that to become a photo sharing site.

Flickr is a good place to post promotional graphics, as many bloggers will link to images in this site rather than posting copies to their own. In that way, it's an effective way to ensure that people who want to display your logo, a photo of your facilities, or a mug shot of your CEO get a current image (and preferably, a positive one).

Some mention is made of using Flickr for promotional purpose - having a photography contest and asking people to upload them to Flickr and tag them with the name of a company. It has also been used for political causes.